DeLoache J S
Human Development and Family Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana 61801.
Child Dev. 1991 Aug;62(4):736-52.
Before one can understand or use any symbol, one must first realize that it is a symbol, that is, that it stands for or represents something other than itself. This article reports 4 studies investigating very young children's understanding of 2 different kinds of symbolic stimuli--scale models and pictures. The data replicate previous findings that 2.5-year-old children have great difficulty appreciating the relation between a scale model and the larger space it represents, but that they very readily appreciate the relation between a picture and its referent. This result is interpreted in terms of the dual orientation hypothesis. Models are difficult for young children because they require a dual representation--a child must think about a model both as an object itself and as a representation of something else. Because pictures are not salient as real objects, they do not require a dual representation. Several kinds of evidence supporting the dual orientation hypothesis are presented. An additional result was the occurrence of a transfer effect: Prior experience with a picture task led to better performance on a subsequent model task. This finding suggests that experience with a symbolic medium they understand can help young children figure out a different, unfamilar medium that they would otherwise not understand.
在一个人能够理解或使用任何符号之前，首先必须意识到它是一个符号，也就是说，它代表或象征着除自身之外的其他事物。本文报告了4项研究，这些研究调查了幼儿对两种不同符号刺激——比例模型和图片——的理解。数据重复了之前的研究结果，即2.5岁的儿童在理解比例模型与其所代表的更大空间之间的关系时存在很大困难，但他们能很容易地理解图片与其所指对象之间的关系。这一结果根据双重定向假设进行了解释。模型对幼儿来说很难，因为它们需要双重表征——儿童必须既将模型视为一个物体本身，又将其视为其他事物的表征。因为图片作为真实物体并不突出，所以它们不需要双重表征。文中呈现了几种支持双重定向假设的证据。另一个结果是出现了迁移效应：先前在图片任务中的经验导致在随后的模型任务中表现更好。这一发现表明，对他们所理解的符号媒介的经验可以帮助幼儿弄清楚一种不同的、原本他们无法理解的陌生媒介。
